"After I gave students their prior knowledge" Pre-service teachers' conceptions of student prior knowledge Documents

Main Document

Pre-service teachers often enter the teaching profession with pre-conceptions about teaching and learning science that are not consistent with contemporary learning theory. To build on this knowledge, we need to identify the beliefs and knowledge that pre-service teachers have about science teaching. In this exploratory study, we investigated pre-service teachers' pre-instructional conceptions of students' prior knowledge. Results indicate that our pre-service teachers held a limited number of conceptions about prior knowledge including a blank slate model of learning